With better care, Bear might be here today

Britain’s record on stillbirths is poor – but it could be improved if the NHS listened to mothers

November 29 2010 was the kind of day that many thousands of pregnant thirtysomethings experience a handful of days from term. I was fielding lots of calls from friends. “No, no sign of baby yet,” I replied, making a lot of tea. It was a blissful day, really.

Was I concerned that I hadn’t felt my baby move for a few hours? Honestly, no. I hadn’t spent my pregnancy inside a cave, and I was – I am – an educated woman. I worked as a journalist. My days were filled with facts and knowledge and I was trained to be acquisitive with information. But I just did not know that babies could suddenly die inside your womb while you rest at home.

At the hospital that evening, several hours and a whole lifetime later, my husband told me to hold my head up high as, on the way back to our car (our lives now barely comprehensible), we walked past a woman in labour. I was still very much pregnant. And yet we were heading home for two days “rest” (the consultant’s term) before I was to give birth to our dead baby.

Stillbirth is like an earthquake going off inside your heart. Everything – your comprehension, your understanding of time, your love, your mind, your place in the world – is all forcefully shattered and sprayed in many painfully confusing and bitter directions. You are broken.

And yet, women in Britain go through this horrific experience all too often. As we discovered at the weekend, this country ranks a pitiful 21st out of 35 wealthy developed nations for our stillbirth rate, behind Poland, Croatia and Estonia. Of every 1,000 births, 4.6 end in stillbirth, a rate that has barely fallen in recent years. That’s because we are not learning the lessons from those who have the bitterest experience of stillbirth: the bereaved parents.

Our son, Bear Hamilton Pullen, was a beautiful, strapping, 7lb 6oz fusion of me and my husband. Why is he not running around our home today, five years later? Simply because I was not told the facts. I didn’t know that babies are at risk so far into pregnancy.

Health professionals – the NHS, the NCT – don’t tell pregnant women these things: they don’t want to scare us. But not to do so is patronising and dangerous. I’m a box-ticker and a worrier; if I’d known what could happen, if I had been more aware of what might be going on, then things could have turned out differently.

It is also mind-boggling that women have their last scan – the last detailed look at what is actually going on with the baby inside you – at just 20 weeks into pregnancy. Yes, there are routine appointments with the GP or midwife after this point; mine dutifully measured my tummy (always on the larger side) and took my weight, but never anything more.

Mothers’ fears and concerns also need to be listened to more closely at antenatal appointments. We must not just be hurried through and filed in the “low-risk” category as a matter of course. If mothers’ concerns about lack of movement, or changes in movement, are taken notice of then there will be fewer stillbirths.

Bear had constant hiccups the day before he died inside me. If I had known this was unusual, I would have flagged it. I am absolutely sure that if Bear had been induced just a day earlier, he would be here today. He shouldn’t have died.

Of course, not every stillbirth can be prevented. But there also needs to be better care for the women who do have to go through this horrendous experience.

After Bear was born (on a normal delivery ward, where women all around me were giving birth to healthy babies), we were released into a world that was for us profoundly changed – but with barely any followup care. Yes, there was the perfunctory post-mortem meeting and we were handed some leaflets about Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal support charity. But the NHS went quiet on us. No counselling (we paid for private support ourselves), no visits; we were cast into the abyss. Bereaved families desperately need better support.

These are simple changes. More information, more time given to expectant couples. But if they were implemented, then fewer families (3,654 of them in 2014) would be left without their precious babies. They would have their lives intact.

And they wouldn’t have to wonder, every day: What if ?